Alternative Investment Awards 2018

2018 Alternative Investment Awards 4 EU PE Firm of the Year 2018: Acuity Management & Most Innovative Alternative SME PE Fund: Acuity Private Fund The Acuity Private Fund has innovated Private Equity to a new level and elegantly engineered a rare type of Alternative Fund to singularly house the biggest wealth transfer in the history of man. We explore what this means for the alternative investment market and how this will impact on the wider financial space. Company: Acuity Management Limited Contact: Tracy Sawyerr Tel: + 44 (0) 203 6033722 Web Address: www.acuityag.com Two major simultaneous events occurred in Europe in the last decade creating a significant investment opportunity for a ‘new- generation’ Private Equity investment, which Acuity Management Limited seeks to take advantage of through its innovative fund offering. The first event was the removal of SME (Small to Medium Enterprises) Bank Debt and SME Private Equity used to finance Management Buy Outs as a means to exit a business. This AI180012 caused the collapse of buy outs by 92.5%. The second event was the beginning of what CNBC News called the ‘Greatest transfer of wealth in the history of mankind’. The first wave of 690,000 Mature SMEs coming up for sale where the founding shareholders, ‘babyboomers’, needed to retire from their long- term established and profitable SME. This is the Mature SME Asset Class. 690,000 are coming up for sale every year for at least a decade constituting approximately € 4 Trillion of the European annual GDP. These SMEs are already successful and do not need to be ‘fixed’, and as such Acuity’s work is not ‘venture’ investing. The majority of Mature SMEs have been trading for 10 or 20 years so risk is already low. Instead, the firm undertakes investing as debt for the equity ownership, which de-risks exposure as this debt starts to be returned to Acuity as soon as the firm has acquired it, and as such this unique model creates a quicker return. These assets are low to medium growth, not super high growth so minimises risk. Through this model, Acuity provides both the Debt and Equity to fund the Mature SME buy outs providing a solution to a huge funding gap in a demographic mega-trend and giving access for the first time to Investors to the returns from the Mature SME Asset Class. The majority of the fund’s investors are family offices, HNW’s and funds of funds, as they appreciate the long hold and dividend generative nature of the product. For these discerning clients, Acuity offers Private Equity investment with a difference: the fund invests and holds the mature SME for as long as possible rather than force an exit. These SMEs have constantly delivered high returns to the previous owners, and as such strong returns are easy to both predict and achieve for investors, who are aligned with the same philosophy of a long hold, value growth and high cash generation. Name: Octavio Ariza Position: Chief Financial Analyst